A Good Friday to Skip

Okay, so I owe my headline to the Tampa Tribune, but I think they'll be okay with me stealing it for the time being.  Yesterday had to be one of the most interesting days I've had so far in my 7.5 months of teaching (has it been that long already?).  This year was the first time my district has had classes on Good Friday.  There was hoopla last year because the Muslim community wanted the holiday of Eid off, and the district finally threw up their hands and moved to a completely secularized calendar.  But students were told all they had to do was get a note from Mom and Dad and they would have an excused absence.  The district had 1/3 of the school bus drivers take a personal day, as well as 40% of the cafeteria workers and custodians, and many teachers.  We were missing 20 out of 135 or so.  But hey, let me tell you how it turned out....

I had 10 kids all day.  Four in 1st period, 1 each in 2nd and 3rd periods, 2 in 4th, 2 in 5th, and a big fat 0 in 6th.  Since I have 7th off, I left at 1 pm.  We have around 2100 kids, and we had 250.  I don't know how many signed out by the end of the day, but there weren't 250 kids there when I left. 

We watched the news, played Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, played Cranium, and figured out riddles and brain teasers (current events, critical thinking, debate, music, PE, and analysis...see?  It wasn't a wasted day!).  I just couldn't believe we wasted taxpayer dollars to keep schools open for this.